The educational leader guides the educational program and the pedagogy of a service. They work alongside educators to shape curriculum decisions, to strengthen the assessment and planning cycle, and to keep critical reflection alive across the team.
The role is a requirement, not an optional title. Regulation 118 says the approved provider must designate a suitably qualified and experienced person as educational leader, in writing, and Regulation 148 says that person's name must be in the staff record.
Day to day, the work is less about paperwork and more about influence. An educational leader tends to:
Responsibilities vary with the size and setting of a service, but they usually gather around four areas: leading curriculum and pedagogy; supporting and mentoring educators; keeping critical reflection and continuous improvement moving; and holding the thread between everyday practice and the National Quality Standard.
Two places name this work. Regulation 118 designates the role. Element 7.2.2 of the National Quality Standard describes it: the educational leader is supported and leads the development and implementation of the educational program and the assessment and planning cycle. Element 7.2.2 sits inside Standard 7.2 (Leadership) in Quality Area 7 (Governance and Leadership).
The regulations are not prescriptive about how a service resources the role. Services decide who takes it on and how it is structured. For the wording, read it at the source rather than a summary.
Much of the role is quiet coaching: noticing where an educator is finding something hard, and building their confidence rather than correcting their paperwork. Mentoring conversations are a professional relationship, held in confidence. What can travel out of them is an agreed change to practice, tried in a room, never the conversation itself.
Leading curriculum means helping the team make deliberate decisions about what children experience and why, and keeping those decisions connected to the learning framework and to the children in the room. It is pedagogical leadership, not a program template.
Critical reflection is where educational leadership shows. The leader keeps the team asking why they practise as they do, and what they might change, and records how practice shifts over time. This is also the work that feeds the Quality Improvement Plan.
Evidence of educational leadership is the leader's own record of the work: notes from team and mentoring conversations, changes made to the program, professional learning, and reflections that show practice changing. It is gathered as a by-product of real leadership, never manufactured for a visit.
An educational leader keeps their own practice growing, and helps plan learning for the team. Element 7.2.2 expects the leader to be supported in the role, which includes building their own knowledge and skills.
Ask ECE builds an Educational Leader Workspace: a private place to plan the program, run team meetings, keep a reflective diary and organise your own leadership record. The tool builds the structure and asks the questions. You write the practice, the strengths and the goals. It never writes them for you.
The educational leader is the person a service designates to lead its educational program and practice, guiding curriculum, supporting educators and strengthening critical reflection across the team.
Yes. Regulation 118 of the Education and Care Services National Regulations requires the approved provider to designate, in writing, a suitably qualified and experienced educator as educational leader.
The National Regulations do not require the educational leader to work away from the children, and they are not prescriptive about how the role is resourced. Each service decides how to structure it. Check the current ACECQA guidance for detail.
Element 7.2.2 (Educational leadership) sits in Quality Area 7. It describes the educational leader being supported and leading the development and implementation of the educational program and the assessment and planning cycle.
By keeping critical reflection and continuous improvement moving across the team, and by recording how practice changes over time, which is the material a Quality Improvement Plan draws on.
Written by the Ask ECE editorial team and checked against ACECQA guidance and the Education and Care Services National Regulations. Last reviewed September 2026. Ask ECE links to the source and does not reproduce it.